Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Tony Oliva is from Cuba, still has family there and visits every few years. The former Twins great, who has known Ozzie Guillen since Guillen’s playing days, says the Miami Marlins manager either doesn’t know Cuba or didn’t realize what he was saying about the country.

“He’s the same guy, talking loud,” Oliva said Tuesday, April 10. “Everybody has a good time around him because he speaks crazy.”

...“Everybody has his own opinion, but I don’t think (Guillen) wanted to hurt anybody or make anybody mad,” Oliva said. “I think he was trying to be funny, but he wasn’t thinking. He knows what happens in Venezuela, but he doesn’t know exactly what happens in Cuba, the tradition.”

Guillen, 48, is from Venezuela.

“He better stick to baseball and forget about politics,” Oliva said. “It’s a hot tomato, no matter how you put it.”

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I read the article title and assumed Oliva was going to be moralizing but (unsurprisingly) the title makes him sound more aggressive than he really was and I agree with his reading of the situation - Ozzie likes to mouth off, politics is a dangerous thing to mouth off about, no harm was actually meant.

And Ozzie wasn't disciplined when he praised Castro in a similar way in 2008. He was punished here because the Marlins recognize the strong feelings a significant percentage of their fan base has toward Castro, and they wanted to minimize the damage to their product. And that's a perfectly logical response, AFIC.

I wonder what percentage of Cardinal fans (not singling out St. Louis per se, but it was the closest thing to a Southern franchise) would've been offended back in the '50s if someone on the team had said something negative about the Klan or racial segregation or the like.

I wonder what percentage of Cardinal fans (not singling out St. Louis per se, but it was the closest thing to a Southern franchise) would've been offended back in the '50s if someone on the team had said something negative about the Klan or racial segregation or the like.

I'm sure that player or team official would've been suspended. Right?

Don't be silly. I'm sure that there would've been some Cardinal fans (or Yankee General Managers) who might have been offended by such comments, but there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that the player or team official would have been punished in any way.

FTR the only pre-Marge Schott suspension I've ever heard of that stemmed from a particular comment was when Jake Powell of the Yankees told a Chicago interviewer that during the off-season he worked as a Dayton policeman and "cracked niggers over the head with [his] nightstick" in order to keep in shape. That happened in 1938, and it got him a 10 game suspension from Commissioner Landis.

And was so embarrassed by the outcry that he eventually killed himself in a fit of humiliation.

I only know a little bit about Powell, but I thought he was just generally unstable, and that his suicide (so far as we know) was not related to his suspension, but to him being arrested for fraud or something, many years later.

And was so embarrassed by the outcry that he eventually killed himself in a fit of humiliation.

I only know a little bit about Powell, but I thought he was just generally unstable, and that his suicide (so far as we know) was not related to his suspension, but to him being arrested for fraud or something, many years later.

Of course you're right, and FTR his suicide did indeed follow his arrest about a decade later. I was just adding a bit of imaginative spin to his tale that might have given it a bit of an Aesopian ending, somewhat along the lines of my fantasy of George Bush's hurling himself upon Dick Cheney's upcoming funeral pyre in penance for having led us into Iraq.

Don't be silly. I'm sure that there would've been some Cardinal fans (or Yankee General Managers) who might have been offended by such comments, but there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that the player or team official would have been punished in any way.

I wonder what percentage of Cardinal fans (not singling out St. Louis per se, but it was the closest thing to a Southern franchise) would've been offended back in the '50s if someone on the team had said something negative about the Klan or racial segregation or the like.

I'm sure that player or team official would've been suspended. Right?

Don't be silly. I'm sure that there would've been some Cardinal fans (or Yankee General Managers) who might have been offended by such comments, but there's not a snowball's chance in Hell that the player or team official would have been punished in any way.

Which of course was exactly my point.

Sorry if I misunderstood you, and if your point is that Ozzie is being held to a nearly unprecedented definition of what constitutes "offensive" speech**, I completely agree and award you a retroactive coke.